Case Number 21067: Small Claims Court

THOSE THREE

The Charge

A look at life on the "other side" of the enemy line...

The Case

In the world of war, where there are only heroes and villains, good guys and
bad guys; we never want to see the enemy as "human." Instead, they are
almost always depicted as animalistic, baser and beyond anything remotely
resembling a recognizable emotional dimension. While it may appear simplistic
(or in many cases, horribly racist), it's a good way of excusing killing. After
all, if you are simply destroying a mindless drone drunk on the evil party
politics line, there's no real individual guilt involved. While arguments over
whether or not there can ever be a "just" armed conflict continue,
movies like Iran's Ah Seh (translation: Those Three) shed light on
what it's like to be part of one nation named "Empire of Evil."
Indeed, U.S. military minds and Western leaders would love to portray the
soldiers in this cinematic situation as nothing short of deserters and craven
cowards. But there is more to the story than this, and thankfully, this
compelling drama does a good job of fleshing out the facts.

The story here is simple. A group of Iranian grunts have just begun their
two-year service to the State, almost all of them present under the pretense of
forced subscription. Many don't want to be part of the common soldiery and
devise ways around the disciple and dead-end drilling. In the Northern part of
the country, snow-bound and under stress, a few decide to go AWOL. They include
Yousef (Yousef Yazdani), the bookwormish Dariush (Dariush Ghazbani) and
troublemaker Essi (Esmail Movahedian). Walking away into the frozen and barren
wasteland, they believe they can survive long enough to return to civilization.
They soon learn, however, that they are deep in unforgiving territory. As they
run across smugglers and one particularly distraught woman, their chances seem
to diminish. Even as they begin to doubt their plan, they realize that almost
anything beats being in the Army -- including the possibility of freezing to
death in the middle of an icy nowhere.

Two years in the making and bleak in both its look and overall message,
Those Three represents one of those rare cultural slices of life that few
outside of the art house circuit get to see. It's a compelling look at one
aspect of a foreign society and sets up its universal subtexts with strong,
solid statements. Our three main leads (though we come to know many in this
ragtag company) provide a cross-section of the stereotypes we expect from this
kind of movie -- the bespeckled smart-ass; the serious, silent type; the
bumbling oaf -- and yet writer/director Naghi Nemati avoids turning them into
symbols. Instead, we get to see real human beings, flaws and all, making
mistakes and paying for them, often with grave consequence. For the first half
of the film, we watch as a somewhat sadistic drill sergeant puts these novices
through their paces, meting out authority with a combination of consideration
and cruelty. We get the reasons why Essi and Dariush want to leave. Convincing
Yousef is another matter all together, and it's this fatal miscalculation that
gives Those Three its last-act gravitas.

So do the scenes in which our traitors run into a man smuggling children, a
lost and lonely woman, and a isolated village filled with reflections of the
life they left behind. In between, we see snippets of dimension that turn the
players from parts to personalities. As the situation grows more desperate, we
also recognize a certain frailty in their often blustery facade. These are not
some faceless jihadist on a terrorist mission to destroy the wicked West.
Instead, these are men with their own issues/fears/concerns that just so happen
to support, ideologically, a position we despise. That doesn't make them any
less personable. It just makes their politics hard to accept. Luckily, there is
little to no preaching involved here. The Global Lens Collection even avoids any
particular position, offering a basic DVD with a nice 1.78:1 anamorphic
widescreen image, Dolby Digital stereo mix, and an explanatory discussion guide
highlighting many of the themes present. While it would be nice to hear Nemati
defend his work, the final result definitely speaks for itself.

Those Three may not change your perception of the men in the Middle
East, but it does say something about the stresses of playing soldier on either
side of the dispute.